On the corner of Taylor and Turk is the 21 Club, a bar of local repute and one of the very few old Tenderloin establishments still in business. The Doll House was formerly the Gayety (later the Gaiety) Theater.

Turk Street east of Taylor, 1982. The sex industry that was once prevalent in the lower Tenderloin has in recent years largely disappeared. None of the businesses seen in these ’80s-era photos now remain.

Much of the Tenderloin’s history is embodied by its blade signs. Inasmuch as they are links to the City’s time line, their removal diminishes our understanding and appreciation of the past. Though time-worn and neglected, the Dahlia’s sign was a nexus to days gone by—now gone forever.

Source: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

Dahlia Hotel, 1937. Newscopy: “When hotel men tried to get the Dahlia Hotel at 74 Turk Street closed, they said it was a vice resort with ten girls. Mayor Rossi’s secretary said: ‘You run your hotels and we’ll run the rest.’”

Adjacent to the Hotel Ambassador is the renovated West Hotel, low-income housing owned and operated by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. Restaurateur Vasilios Glimidakis, “the Greek from Crete,” owned the hotel from 1967 to 1984, when around it flourished a little pocket of Greek cuisine and culture embodied by the Minerva Café (a taverna owned and managed by Glimidakis), the Golden Peacock, and Mike’s Bar and Mediterranean Café.